Superjustin18 sent me a weird message and I don't appreciate it. I don't know his intent but don't intend to reply to him. Please flag it or whatever to make him stop. Thanks. PS I don't have time for this.

This isn't really a forum for complaints; more for discussion. Inappropriate private messages should probably get reported to the staff via... Hmm.; I'm not really sure what the correct path would be (public comments have that "flag as inappropriate" button, but not PMs.)

Hello, I have come across a problem with my instructable. I have published it and it says its published, you can enter it through my instructables page but if you were to search for it you cant find it. Can someones please help me and tell me whats going on?

Someone (user http://www.instructables.com/member/mowie/) has been repeatedly leaving nasty comments on one of my instructables. Is there anyway to file a complaint about a user or block them from commenting. I flagged all the comments as spam but I'm not sure what happens next. If you look at their other comments, the user doesn't seem to do anything but leave nasty message for people.

I did flag them, I was just wondering if Instructables has a mechanism to block or complain about abusive users as well. I was wondering if there was a formal way to do this and what procedure Instructables follows to ban people that are spamming users with offensive comments.

I flagged him and reported him to the federal child predator / anti-child porn investigation folks since he was talking about getting off on naked pictures of my child. He can explain to them why he's so funny. But it would be nice if Instructables had a more effective way to for users to respond to anti-social behavior.

Well if you don't have "pictures" of your child, (or your child isn't a member on here) then why worry? But I honestly would not get so concerned about a sick joke on the internet, unless of course you feel you have a stalker. =\

I have pictures of my son sitting in a kiddie pool as part of my Instructable on making a pool. Having someone talk about masturbating to pictures of my 1 year old seems a bit far over the line for a website that's based on community participation.

If I edit an Instructables project, that is already published, may I/Should I unpublish and re-publish it to bump it to the top of the "recent" list ? At what point does this become obnoxious or unacceptable? (I'm thinking in particular of Choose a Microcontroller which has been getting about one new page a week.) Or is posting a comment in the instructable mentioning the added content the correct solution?

You might not realize this, but much of the traffic to the site comes in from search. So even if your project isn't on the front page, there are still a bunch of people finding it. Dump "How to choose a microcontroller" into Google -- you might be surprised.

It does seem like there ought to be a choice for sorting any list by current popularity (based on criteria selected arbitrarily) at least. That would bring the meat of the act to the forefront. Recent doesn't do it, neither does New or Comments necessarily. It's definitely something I would look at.

Maybe I'm a little too new here to know if there's a reason why instructables and forums cannot be automatically sorted by current popularity. I imagine it would be easy enough to do, and it's usually the first thing other sites do (in one way or another). If I am missing something about the culture here, then it would be nice if someone could tell me what it was.

Either way, take a look at my last instructable. It's got about 10 votes and more than 70 comments, already. But if you wanted to find it, you'd have to go back a few pages on either Recent or Comments.

Right now, sorting by pageviews is what you want. It isn't perfect, but it shows you a list of Instructables ordered by the most pageviews in the last week. We've been brainstorming on a popularity sorting that would take into account recent comments, ratings, pageviews, and some other data, but we're not there yet.

If you just unpublish and republish your Instructable maintains its original publish date. To do this, you'd have to create a new Instructable with the same content plus the new content. We've reached the point where it's becoming difficult to keep track of all the new Instructables. So, we'll be releasing categories and a bunch of other fixes by the end of the month. All the new stuff is geared at making it easier to find the things you're interested in.

right now i would leave it alone and let it have just as much front page time as any other project just to be nice some feature suggestion maybe "sticky" instructables will help? or how about a special "republished" section? subscribe to changes option?

I ran into an etiquette situation I didn't have a good answer for in my instructable for the let it glow contest. My project borrowed a concept from another project in the same contest. It was something I would simply have not come up with on my own (putting a DVD behind the LED to help it reflect better). My instructable itself was different enough that I didn't have a problem putting it in the same contest. However, since I think his idea greatly improved my own I wasn't sure how to handle it, and I felt a little guilty for using it. I should have probably just asked, but time was running out on the contest so my answer was to give full credit and a link to his idea in my own instructable. I figured this could only improve his chances as well if people liked and read mine. However, second opinions in the matter are nice as well. Another quick question in regards to etiquette (or at least treatment of fellow members)... how do you add yourself to the "I like it" area of someone's instructable? I'm still fairly new to the site and haven't quite figured it out yet. Thanks.

The ability to block a user is on our to-do list. So for now I'd recommend just deleting annoying messages and if it's really threatening or obnoxious we can deal with it. I checked the message you were talking about and while it was annoying it wasn't terrible. I'd say you should just delete it and not respond. I've had hundreds of nasty emails sent my way over the years and the only thing that makes the people happier is an angry response.

Anyways, is it considered poor taste to repeat an Instructable of another person?

While I can't speak for them.... It is apparent that the creators of instructables support variation. If you modify another project or have a different method/process - it's a viable project for documentation. Linking and giving credit to the previous work (if you were aware) is a good idea and polite ;)

There have been occasions when a project is posted without even knowing someone else did it already. I say, there's nothing wrong with that ;) There are also situations where someone "beats you to the punch." Personally, if I put the effort into a project - I'm going to post it... Even if someone else beat me to it as the effort you put into your work is evident ;) I know a specific project entered in the last contest, and it was welcomed :)

It has been my experience that most online communities (especially of the forum variety) don't like repetition on a theme (in this case, a project). Phrases like "search first" et. al. are common responses in such communities. But, since Is started coming here, my thinking has changed ;) There's always room for another one ;)

To address the question you asked Feb 12th: If you can make a judgement that the edited work contains sufficient new material that it could be called new and original - republish. That is to say, if you can make the edit into a new or supplemantary Instructable do so. Otherwise your original hasn't changed much and is should stay where it is.

I think if you are making tiny version changes (i.e. V1.35 to V1.36) then don't republish. But if you are adding some significant content(V1.0 to V1.3), republish. Additionally, if it's been at least 1 month since you've first published it, and the tiny changes you've made cumulatively have improved it significantly, republish. (i.e. adding to V1.0 slowly to V1.35) Repeatedly republishing an existing instructable every day or week for a small change does start to get a bit annoying. But if you save up all the changes and republish every month or so with significant new content, that might be worth republishing.